For the purpose of electrical insulation and/or of improvement in their tribological properties, components, more particularly bearing components, for which the tribological properties are particularly important, are provided with specific coatings. For the purpose of electrical insulation, it is common to apply thick ceramic spray coats to the components.
A problem with the typical thick ceramic coats is that in certain cases these coats are of only limited suitability, or completely unsuitable, for bearing components. More particularly there is to date no known coating which alongside good electrical insulation properties does justice simultaneously to the exacting requirements of the capacity to withstand a rolling load—which in the case of some bearing components is a prerequisite. In general, furthermore, the thick ceramic layers require subsequent machining and have a relatively high mass. The ceramic layers, furthermore, are unsuitable for small bearings with internal diameters of less than 75 mm, since because of the small bearing tolerances these bearings do not allow a thick insulating layer or for reasons of process engineering and/or geometry cannot be equipped with a ceramic spray coating. An alternative coating method, with which a PTFE antifriction layer is applied, is known from publication DE 101 47 292 B4, for example.